Ascension
by Akazukin Elle
Summary: The descent of angels is rarer still in a city occupied by them.


Ascension  
  
1 Brighter Angels Did Fall  
  
The Academy rose in crystal glory on the horizon of Crystal Tokyo; its pyres reflected the morning sunlight onto the sprawling metropolis, meeting the sky in a greatness unmet in the city's proximity -- except for the Palace it stood to the north-east of, which surpassed the Academy's crystal apex. It was an effect considered most fitting; the Palace was the parent building of its smaller compatriot. The March air was warm and the sounds of early-morning traffic did not diminish the electricity which was emanating from the Academy. The city moved on, but with a sense of excitement and one of apprehension: parents with children dropped them off at school worriedly, kissing them soundly goodbye. Lipstick marked more cheeks today than usual.  
  
The sprawling hills beyond the Academy bore no sign of the damage they had borne during the wars: there was no sign of the nuclear or magical devastation, save for the falsely new growth of grass blanketing the countryside for miles and miles beyond Crystal Tokyo. The ocean was quiet on the other side of the city, docile, gentle, unmoving; across it moved the scent of black smoke, curling over the waves before disappearing.  
  
No cars slowed to a stop before the Academy. The Crystal Tokyo Memorial Academy did not start classes until one week after the other schools in the city; it couldn't. Its older students were not required to attend a rigid schedule, and its younger students were not yet admitted into the Academy at all.  
  
Over the newgrown hills, a cool wind swept the grass first one way and then another. Today only happened once every three years, and it was always a beautiful spring day when it did. Fate seemed to work that way.  
  
Today was the Choosing. The world waited.  
  
*  
The gymnasium complex of the school was run-down; the floor was scuffed, the walls were faded, and broken windows were left unrepaired, except for the careful application of tape and plastic to the worst ones.  
  
"We're wasting our time," Sailor Pollux muttered to her partner, one Sailor Capella. Both women wore impeccable, identical black business suits -- standard issue for civil servants in the department of special defense; black jacket, black skirt or pants, white shirt, black shoes -- but from thereout they differed wildly, especially if one considered that Pollux wore a sour expression and Capella was the visage of a calm, professional senshi.  
  
"Don't say that," Capella admonished her partner briefly, scanning the rumbling gymnasium for signs of disrest. If she was even slightly discontent at the prospect of having the Choosing ceremony in the gymnasium of the city's least respected high school in the city's most dangerous neighbourhood, she wasn't letting on.  
  
"Everyone knows nothing could come from -this- neighbourhood but crime," Pollux snapped, but quietly. "We only got this school because of that last mission."  
  
"Which was your fault." A gentle but firm reminder. "We'll see, won't we?" Capella smiled, pushing a stray strand of ash-blonde hair out of her face. She was a pretty woman, all things considered, but eternal youth didn't suit her; that long roman nose did not quite suit her face, sophomoric in its growth as it was.  
  
Pollux fell silent and waited.  
  
*  
  
She hadn't even meant to go to school that morning. Papa was having trouble at the store and Mama was having trouble with the twins, which usually meant that she stayed home and watched the kids while her mother rushed about, filling in for the latest no-show slackass cashier at the Morisato Grocery. It meant she stayed home and did her homework and wailed to her younger sisters about her maths assignment, while Keiko and Mariko -- the twins in question -- giggled.  
  
But then her friend had called just as her alarm went off and reminded her that Student Council was required to be at hand during the ceremony today, and she'd groaned and rolled out of bed. Her mother had been vaguely annoyed, since her daughter's involvement Student Council had always bothered the harried gray-haired woman, but had sent her off to school with a freshly-packed lunch and a kiss on the cheek.  
  
So here she was, fulfilling her sometimes-detested duties as Student Council Vice President and making people behave. She much preferred being VP when something fun -- like soccer tryouts or school dances -- were going on. Assemblies inevitably meant that she had to glare at people unintimidatingly.  
  
"Hey!" she shouted at a group of boys attempting to light cigarettes in the darkest corner of the gym. It was the first day of school, and the lights were already burning out. Half the time, she felt as though every other thing in the damned school was broken, no matter how much they fundraised or petitioned the city for more maintenance money. It was an old school -- they still had textbooks from before the wars! -- and everything broke at the slightest provocation. "Put those out," she snapped when they glanced at her questioningly. Smoking inside the school had ceased to be a problem years before she'd even graduated from junior high: nobody was paid enough to enforce it.  
  
They put them out on the floor, muttering.  
  
"Thank you," she said sarcastically, under her breath, turning to stomp away. It wasn't as though -she- wanted to be Miss Enforcer of School Regulations 3052, but she knew for a fact that one of the senshi waiting up front had seen them, and it annoyed her that the government could see the bad things in their school without trying.  
  
The principal took to the podium. He was a short, squat man with a thin moustache and thick glasses which sat on his nose and slipped off occasionally; his voice was of medium tone, but he stuttered so badly that usually you couldn't tell. "Students," he said, standing too close to the microphone. "P-please settle do-down. We're abou-about t-to buh-begin the ceremony. I will nuh-now i-i-introduce Sailor Puh-Pollux, who will start the p-procedures."  
  
Nobody settled down, including Student Council Vice President Sayako Morisato, who was pulling two first-year students out of a muted fistfight. Nice way to start high school, she thought resignedly, remembering the drug bust that had marked her first day of school here. That had come after the Choosing, which, as was usual for this place, had resulted in zero students being spirited away to the Academy.  
  
"I want all of you to shut up -now-," said Sailor Pollux dangerously, and they did, mostly because her voice instilled fear into the hearts of older and more experienced people, and the tall, dark-haired woman looked as though she was going to unleash her superpowers on them at any moment. "Sit still and don't talk. The ceremony will only take about half an hour, after which you will all be dismissed to your first period class." From Sayako's view, she looked like one of the women in Attack of the Amazons!, which her friend -- and fellow Student Council member -- Ami swore by as the best movie of all time.  
  
"So does this suck or what?" Ami asked, as Sayako sat on the floor near the back, next to the rest of the Student Council.   
  
Sayako pulled her knees up to her chest. She hated sitting on the floor, especially since her uniform shirt was a little bit too tight this year and showed how her stomach sort of folded when she sat. "It sucks," she murmured to her friend. Ami was short and cute and thin, and had her pixie-cut hair dyed an extremely garish, extremely trendy colour of pink. Her voice was high and cute and Sayako found herself jealous of her friend all over again: her own hair was straight, black, and shoulder-length. She was short, but she was also kind of hippy, and not in the cute earthy flower girl way. And her thighs were kind of big. And...  
  
Something happened. It wasn't necessarily that the ground shook, or the ceiling fell in, but she felt something -happen-, and when she looked up, she saw a vague kind of light descend onto the students. It was just the ceremony, she thought. Nothing to be worried about. She'd been through it four times before -- it wasn't anything special, just some parlor tricks the senshi'd picked up somewhere. Rumour had it that it was the Council themselves who chose who got to be Chosen -- and, after all, who in their right mind would choose poor kids from the ports? She'd never even heard of anyone from her high school being Chosen.  
  
She didn't glow as the light settled over her. There were no explosions or fireworks or tricks of radiance to awe the crowd; nothing to signal that anything was even happened, aside from Pollux's dark hawkish eyes at the front of the room. The only thing that happened -- really -- was that she felt lightheaded for a moment, just a very brief moment, and then she was aware of slumping over and after that she wasn't even aware anymore. She didn't even get to hear her best friend shriek like a little girl, which was funny enough -- even sober -- to make an entire class go into hysterics.  
  
Up at the front, Sailor Capella smiled, and her partner stared open-mouthed, at the unconscious girl at the back.  
  
There were interesting times ahead, indeed.  
  
*  
  
She woke up slowly in the nurse's office, with the stern visage of Nurse Arikawa standing over her. "Oh! I'm sorry!" she protested, sitting up in the infirmary bed and wincing at the pounding headache she'd just developed. The nurse's office was too warm, and she wondered vaguely why she was there.  
  
"Don't apologise, Morisato," the nurse said tiredly. "You've just been Chosen, that's all. No sense in apologising. I've seen a few of you in my day; you'll want some headache remedy and a glass of water. You're going to have a long day."  
  
"Oh," said Sayako.  
  
"The senshi are waiting in the principal's office," continued the indomitable nurse, handing the dark-haired girl a glass of water. "I'll call them in after just a moment, you'll want your wits about you. It won't take long to get things sorted out, so don't be worried -- there's a pet," she added, as Sayako took a tentative sip of her water. She patted the girl's hand. "Bless me, I don't understand why they have to keep doing it that way." At Saya's confused, albeit still slightly dazed, expression, she explained, "They're just checking for the star seeds now, you remember that from your history class? Take these," she instructed, handing the girl two painkiller pills. "I'll call them in."  
  
Saya waited, swinging her feet over to the floor from the end of her cot. Her feet dangled above the ground; her standard-issue mary-janes shone with harshly-applied polish. She waited.  
  
It was a brief discussion. Sailor Pollux handed her a letter and Sailor Capella told her that she was expected at the Academy that evening. There were dormitories there, and she'd be paired with another first-year student -- and that classes started in another few days, but she was expected to be there for orientation, and to welcome any foreign students who had been Chosen as well.  
  
She sat in the nurse's office after they'd left and cried into the nurse's arms; not because she was unhappy, but because she didn't want to change.  
  
And then she went to say goodbye to all of her friends, and it was so much harder than she'd expected -- because she could see them sometimes, but she wouldn't be doing Japanese projects with Rika or wailing over math with Ami or even running Student Council with super-A-type Anorudo.  
  
*  
  
The courtyard was chilly that afternoon; winter clung to the air desperately and ran down her back in shivers.  
  
"How can you -leave-?" wailed Ami, clinging to Sayako's arm tightly. "I'll miss you! How will we organize the Spring dance if you're not here to make everyone shut up? How will you survive with all the rich princesses who don't know what a budget is and who hate all poor people because they're terrible right-wing nazi fascists? How will I survive without you stopping me from dating older men and drinking too much at parties?"  
  
Sayako giggled uneasily. "You'll live," she teased gently, biting her lip afterwards as though she was about to cry. "It's not like there'll be another war so soon after the last one, so I'll live, too!" If her smile was desperate, it was probably only the fading light casting shadow-tricks on the young girl's round face.  
  
Wind cast the winter's dead leaves into the air, and the rattling echoed through the empty schoolyard; Saya's hair flew into her face and tangled. Their feet stepped on dry grass and fallen brown leaves and crunched, breaking the slow walk into each step, a nearly hypnotising rhythm -- step-crunch, step-crunch, step-crunch -- that Sayako concentrated on to keep her composure. It's not the end of the world, she told herself, and was convinced that she was lying.  
  
"I'll miss you," Ami whispered finally. "It won't be the same without you, Saya, really it won't. It'll just be math I don't understand and losing soccer games and everyone yelling at me about how bad the school dances are. You're my best friend." Her voice broke momentarily, but she regained control. Ami Hitoshira was not a girl who cried in public.  
  
Saya sighed. "I know," she said, staring down past her bright blue jacket to the ground. "I wish they hadn't picked me." She was silent, and in her silence the wind picked up again, whistling over the faded brick walls and pulling her hair every which way. She felt tears sting her eyes, and, angrily, she dashed them away with the backs of her hands. Her knuckles rubbed her eyelashes vigorously, until mascara was streaked wetly under her dark eyes.  
  
"I wish they hadn't, too," Ami said, digging a tissue out of her purse to dab at her friend's wayward mascara. Her lower lip trembled tenuously as she did so -- on the verge of breaking down -- but she bit it hard and firmed her lips resolutely. "Will you still come to work?" she asked, breathlessly, as though it had taken all of her courage and all of the air in her lungs to ask, and she hadn't had any left over to actually utter the words.  
  
Sayako smiled tremulously. "'Course," she said, and she was proud that her voice did not waiver -- much. "Still have to make money. 'S not like they're going to pay me for being chosen."  
  
Spontaneously, Ami wrapped her arms around her friend, and they embraced for a long moment, both savouring the last of the times when they would be together and things would be the same.   
  
Change was coming. They both knew it; it haunted them like a spectre of the future whistling above them and crackling below them. Nothing was supposed to happen this way.  
  
And, oh, Saya wished she could stop it.  
  
They walked under the shade of the trees in the courtyard for a while longer, and then, too soon, it was time to leave.  
  
*  
  
Going home had been difficult. The phone had rung itself nearly off the hook, and, in the end, her mother had disconnected it. "You'll still have e-mail and the phone at the Academy, they called me today and told me all about it," she'd said firmly, and then insisted that Sayako go and pack.  
  
Her room was fairly neat. The floor, at least, was bare and clean and the floor, of course, was where she knelt in front of her mother's hideous old suitcases, which were so worn from age that they were nearly ready to fall apart. Good enough for one more short journey, Saya supposed.  
  
She packed slowly and with great deliberation. She reread the section about packing in the letter meticulously every two or three minutes, expecting to find it somehow magically changed to her liking; but every time she read it, it said, "Students are not to have extraneous personal belongings. It is expected that dormitory rooms will be neat and well-kept at all times; the CTMA has found that students will succeed in keeping their personal spaces clean if they bring only what they need and will use. The school will provide bedding, uniforms, school supplies, and sports/training equipment," and she sighed and pulled a stuffed animal out of the suitcase regretfully.  
  
So she took great care in choosing her best dress, a short, pink, flouncy little number which her mother had made her that summer, as well as various skirts, shirts, and jeans. Her soccer cleats were mournfully left in her closet, but she packed her soccer jersey because she sometimes wore it like a normal shirt, and it said KMM Soccer across the back. She'd been so proud to get that jersey, even as a second-string mid -- and her mother had smile and her father had been proud like he never was about her grades.  
  
She put the portrait of her family in a side pocket. It was framed in cheap faux-gold metal and wobbled if you accidentially hit the desk it sat on, but she loved the picture, and she could maybe buy a better frame for it -- one not bought ten percent off at her father's shop -- if she saved up a bit.  
  
Then two years' worth of notes went in: Maths, English, Japanese History, World History, Biology, and Chemistry. She didn't even cringe at her old test marks, except to wonder what kind of classes they had at the Academy. She knew that it went through all the grade levels, and even into university, and was basically the best school you could go to but those things only made her more worried, like would she pass and was everyone going to be smarter than she was.  
  
Dusk fell outside her window, and she could hear her father closing shop beneath her bedroom. When she was sick, that bedroom was so noisy thanks to the shop below it that she had to relocate to the couch, where her younger sisters -- with varying degrees of success -- brought her tea and toast.  
  
Her stomach twinged when she realised that the Academy would not have younger sisters available to bring her toast.  
  
But she didn't get sick often, and continued to pack, including in the wornout suitcases her makeup and jewellery, in scant supply though both were. Her favourite earrings had been a gift from Ami, a pair of little smiling cats with pink rhinestones for eyes. She'd had them since for ever, since before boys stopped being icky and teachers started being boring.  
  
Last into the second suitcase -- both were, amazingly, nearly full, who'd known she had all that stuff -- were her pyjamas, meticulously well-taken care of, pants and tank-tops (and t-shirts which had been deemed to ratty to wear in public) stuffed into the top. Somehow it seemed important to bring all of them.  
  
Only when her packing was done did she realise that no one had told her what senshi she was. She wondered -- suddenly fearful -- how the Choosing process really worked.  
  
Again it was time to go, and she felt as though she had never really had enough time here in the first place. As they left the apartment -- she kissed her father goodbye, pecking his cheek hesitantly -- she saw her sisters' faces pressed against the windows above the grocery, and it took all of her will not to run back for one last goodbye.  
  
Her ears rang with the sounds of the street she'd lived on all of her life, and she closed her eyes to commit them to memory -- and to blink away the sudden tears that stung her so badly.  
  
*  
  
The drive was not long, but it was more than made up for in discomfort.  
  
Her mother was trying to smile. "It's an honour," she kept saying, and Saya knew that she was only trying to convince herself. As they drove -- mother and daughter with the old family suitcases in the back, which were plaid and leather and about to fall apart -- they spoke, but neither the girl nor the woman said anything of consequence.  
  
Sayako, falteringly: "I didn't think they Chose fat people." Her hair was neat and her nails clipped, but her hands shook whenever she moved them.  
  
"Don't be stupid," snapped her mother. "You're beautiful. Never let thes -- anyone tell you otherwise. On the soccer field, your grandmother could never take her eyes away from you." Saya stared silently at her hands rather than answering, immersing herself in melodrama. At the Academy, there would be no one to remind her of her beloved Grandmother.  
  
Except herself! she thought with sudden fierceness, and the feeling of leaving everything behind dimished. She'd just have to get used to depending on herself, that was how it always happened, wasn't it?  
  
Her mother took a deep breath, and the atmosphere changed slightly, turning from uncomfortable to foreign. "I don't want you to lose that, Sayako. You've always been a good girl -- God knows I've tried to help you -- but now you have to answer to people you might feel you don't owe anything to." Kiri Morisato's voice was absolutely unwavering. Sayako glanced at her, half-curious, half-puzzled. "Sayako, you are a good girl, I think. Whatever kind of star seed or dream mirror or heart crystal you have, never think for a moment that anyone in your family ever thought it was anything but beautiful."  
  
She laughed, but behind it was a whimper. "Even though I'm not good at math, and I always leave my homework until the last minute?" Her mother pulled sharply to the side of the road, pulling up in front of the Academy.  
  
Saya had not even seen it coming.  
  
Her mother smiled. "Even so," she said to Saya as they stepped out of the family's rusted old car. The air was bitingly chilly and it felt like a rebuke after the comfort of the car. "Do well, Sayako. You have the things you need to survive, I think."  
  
Saya tried to smile back. "I'll do my best!" she said, giving her mother a half-hearted v-for-victory. Her hair was tightly braided in two pigtails and tied with bright pink elastic bands, a tribute to her favourite colour; her skirt blew against her legs in the heavy wind, brushing the heavy brown corderoy against her thighs.  
  
"We will miss you at home, Sayako," murmured Kiri, hauling a suitcase out of the backseat. She added quietly, "Come visit the twins. They still need an older sister." Straightening her jacket, she looked anxiously at her daughter. The crystal points of the Academy's towers rose towards the dusk viciously; dust rose along the street like a peculiar dark mist.  
  
"I'll visit," Saya said quickly, nearly in tears. "I promise I will."  
  
"You're a good girl," her mother whispered to her, dropping the suitcase on the sidewalk and pulling her daughter close to her. Saya buried her face in her mother's shoulder.  
  
The time for that was past, and she knew it. "I have to go, Mama," she said. "I love you. Tell Papa I love him." She pulled away, but her mother caught her hand and held it for a moment.  
  
"He knows," said her mother, and the lines on the woman's face made her seem very old. An acute sense of loss strung the two together. "You are an exceptional young woman, Saya. This is an opportunity for you. Don't lose it."  
  
"I won't."  
  
"Promise me." There was a sense of urgency in the gray woman's eyes that frightened Saya, who was used to the solid, staid predictability from her mother. Kiri was the shoulder to cry on; in a sense, her shoulders carried the entire family from crisis to financial crisis to medical crisis and back again.  
  
"I promise, Mama," she said, and if her voice was a little bit shaky, well, only they knew. Together, they took the suitcases and made their way to the front doors, crystal spires and dust notwithstanding. Saya fancied herself slightly better than to be intimidated by a building.  
  
*  
  
Orientation was interesting. There had been an unusually large number of girls Chosen that particular year in the damp humid spring, and once all of them had arrived, some from locations as foreign as Argentina and Mozambique, there were thirty in total. Of those, there were thirteen in Saya's class.  
  
She'd been the third of the Tokyo girls to arrive with suitcases in hand that first night: she'd been ushered by a receptionist through the front halls of the Academy and out the back doors, where she was faced with the other two girls and the blonde senshi she'd met earlier in the day.  
  
And if she hadn't been such a stammering, stuttering mess, she might have even come off as smooth and sophisticated.  
  
But she'd been shown to her dorm room nonetheless, told that her roommate (a girl from Germany) was going to arriving on Sunday, given a laptop computer (at which she squeaked) and a pamphlet (which she took with trembling hands), and told to come to Orientation at 10:00am sharp the next morning.  
  
And she'd sat in Room 37 of Serenity House and closed her eyes so that even if it was a dream she'd still remember the scent of washed carpets and fresh air from the window; that she'd recall the bed underneath her with regulation navy-blue sheets and the room around her with bare walls, which was nearly bigger than her entire apartment back home.  
  
Most of all, though, she'd wanted to remember the keen sense of loss that had mounted throughout the day, and how clumsy she was -- how stumbling, how maladroit -- because they reminded her of why she'd never thought to worry about being chosen. Senshi on television were beautiful and poised and they never ever stuttered. She didn't stutter -- much -- except that she had only ever spoken in front of her high school, and they liked her, except for --  
  
And then she had opened her eyes and began to unpack.  
  
Orientation the next morning included not only the two girls who had arrived with her the night before, but as well a boy -- named Nartan, who was from India but was the son of the Indian ambassador -- and two new girls, one of whom spoke with the distinct Osakan accent Saya had learned to loathe over the years. Osakans were some of the cheapest hagglers in the market. The other girl was obviously Palace-bred; she had the lazy, almost condescending look of someone who was completely at home with who she was. They were named Takumi and Yukiji respectively -- or possibly reverse-respectively. They'd named themselves all to begin with, but without nametags Saya was never sure.  
  
"Okay!" Sailor Capella was saying cheerfully. "Hi, everyone! I'm Sailor Capella, but while I'm in Crystal Tokyo I'll be acting in capacity as Serenity House's house mother, so feel free to call me Allison!"  
  
Saya and Takumi-or-Yukiji (Osakan accent version) tittered nervously. They were sitting in the Serenity House common room, which was strangely devoid of other human life -- despite the fact that Saya had come across a few other girls as she brushed her teeth and washed the night before. (The idea of communal bathrooms made her very nervous.) Serenity house was one of the spires of the Academy, stretching up to the sun's xenith in the late morning; it held four floors of dormitory rooms, two for the second-year high school girls and the others for the boys, although traditionally one of the boys' floors was superceded by the girls. There were never as many men as women in the Ministry of Special Defense.  
  
"We're just going to go over some basics of why you're here, and then I'm going to introduce you to your instructor for your first training session." Capella paused, then said, "So, who here can tell me why you're here?"  
  
Whenever teachers asked that, Saya wondered if it was because they didn't know the answer either.  
  
"It's because we've been born with the golden Starseeds of the Sailor Senshi," piped up the posh girl; her voice was low, smooth, and lazy -- the voice of the upper class all in one person. Saya felt suddenly very small, because she hadn't known that -- not in so many words. "The Choosing Rituals detected this in our hearts and we were chosen to become warriors for the queen."  
  
Capella nodded encouragingly. Her ash-blonde hair bobbed perkily at her shoulders, brushing the white fabric of her peculiar 'Smile! You're in Serenity House!' t-shirt. "And now you're here. I'm sure it was a surprise to all of you!" She laughed and they followed her lead, but there was an incredulous expression on the posh girl's face, as though to say, 'Me? Incredulous? Not so likely'. Capella continued, "Now that you're here, I'm going to tell you what to expect: Hard work, and lots of it. The Crystal Tokyo Memorial Academy was created after the Black Moon Crisis of 3000 for reasons of global security; the Japanese Ministry of Special Defense is less concerned with Japan than it is with Earth as a whole, and your training will reflect that. By the time you graduate, you will be well versed in the applications of mathematics and science, world history dating back to pre-historic times, both Japanese and world literature, and two foreign languages. You will be physically fit, mentally strong, and able to face a multitude of problems on your own. You'll be trained in teamwork, but also to work by yourself and to think critically.  
  
"You're here, in essence, to become the officers of a global army. Your commanders are the elder Senshi: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. You will meet some of them during this year; I know that Mercury is planning on teaching a mathematics course, and Venus has always been active in supporting our extracurricular athletics programme." She smiled at Saya, and Saya smiled back politely. "However, you will answer -- as do we all -- to Neo-Queen Serenity, King Endymion, and, should the occasion arise, Sailor Pluto. Your duties will vary, depending on your strengths and weaknesses -- but know that every senshi in the Ministry performs an essential duty to the crown and to the universe."  
  
"Has anyone ever failed?" asked the Osakan girl next to Saya asked.  
  
Capella paused, interrupted in her diatribe, and a curious expression crossed her face, gone before Saya could place it. "No," she said, shaking her head. "We have had three dropouts who renounced their power and two deaths -- both from the influenza epidemic of '24 -- but nobody has ever failed." She smiled. "Anyway, none of you should worry. You all seem like exceptional young people."  
  
Saya worried.  
  
"Anyway! The dorm rules are posted on your doors, so I'll just reiterate what they say: do what you want, so long as you're back before curfew and it's within the law. We aren't here to restrict you, although the curfew might seem restrictive at first -- we have your best interests at heart. If you're going to be after curfew, just let someone know -- but if you don't have a good excuse, don't expect to get out of it. After curfew is quiet time, and lights out is at midnight. There'll be inspections of your rooms, but nothing too strict -- just keep your beds made and you'll be fine." She beamed broadly at them.  
  
"What about classes?" Nartan from India inquired in a very quiet voice. He was tall -- much taller than Saya's 5'1" -- and had thin shoulders; his wireframes kept slipping to the end of his nose.  
  
"All of the second-year high school students take the same classes,"   
Capella explained. "This year, you'll have about nineteen people in your class -- some people have been here since the first grade, if you can believe it! Some things, like training, are divided into ability classes, and the girls don't practise with the boys, but otherwise you'll all be working together!" She flipped a strand of hair out of her eyes and grinned. "You'll be sick of eachother by July, but your grades depend a lot on teamwork. You'll find that your classes will go through the basics of each subject for about two weeks until everyone's caught up to the same level, and tutors are always available to students who need 'em."  
  
Sun shone strongly through the wide panes of glass across from the little group. It was a bright morning, with clouds evaporating slowly on the horizon.  
  
Capella talked for another hour, and sent them off to lunch -- with directions to the Training Centre, their ultimate destination of the day.  
  
Saya thought she looked worried, but the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth were so atypical of a senshi that she swept it from her mind.  
  
*  
  
"You will learn to both love and hate these sessions," the woman said   
with a slight smile on her face. Their small group had grown since before lunch, and joining the original four were two others: a tiny girl from Hokkaido who could not have weighed much more than ninety pounds and a pretty tall girl (with teeth like a horse) from Sendai. Saya had eyed them with trepidation when they'd come, but they seemed all right. "The work here is grueling. If you don't have the patience or the dedication to learn to use your body, you will fail here, and if you fail here you will not graduate."  
  
They were all as silent as the dead. It wasn't often, after all, that you came face to face with Sailor Neptune, the Elegant Senshi of the Blah Blah Blah Blah Protector of the World, Nay, the Universe Et Cetera. She Who Looked Really Good on TV. And Knew It.  
  
Not that Saya would ever have said that outloud. She was too busy trying not to bite her nails. The room they were standing in was massive, located well beyond the rest of the school near the rolling grassy hills of the countryside. It wasn't so much a room as a complex; to her left were doors labelled 'SIMULATOR', and further up ahead were simple "Practice Rooms", floored with mats and mirrors along the walls. To her right were weight machines, weights, balls, jumping ropes, and more -- it looked to Saya like somebody had simply sat down with a catalog of sports equipment and ordered five of everything. (She was wrong. It had been a long, involved procress with quite a few catalogs, Neptune tearing her hair out in frustration, Uranus laughing herself sick in the background, Serenity beaming and suggesting, "just one more basketball, it's the most fun, right, Michiru?", and, eventually, seven of everything.)   
  
"We will be working on your strength, your agility, your resilience, your endurance, and your strategy. You'll be sparring, running, lifting weights, and, eventually, going through simulated battles in full -- " a dry smile -- "senshi regalia. Questions?"  
  
"When do we get to know what senshi we are?" demanded the posh girl from that morning, whose name was definitely Yukiji.  
  
Neptune raised her eyebrows at the girl, whose hair hung past her shoulders almost fluidly, gleaming in the fluorescent lights -- it was a dark shade of blue, almost navy. "Why," she said lightly, as though she'd expected them to know, "Whenever you figure it out for yourselves."  
  
"But -- " the girl began. Neptune held up a hand to silence her.  
  
"It is not as though we have a factory of magical cats mass-producing transformation items for you," she said, and if a sarcastic smile touched her lips, nobody even thought to smile back. "For one thing, Artemis would hate the treadmill. For another, it is considered important that each of you discover your -- ah -- 'senshi identity' in a way that is unique to you alone. It may just happen naturally, a walk in the Palace gardens -- or it may happen during training -- or before a test you couldn't study for. When it does happen, you'll not only know, but you'll be expected to report immediately to the main office for documentation. Until then," she said, with a very sweet smile, "you're stuck doing regular drills."  
  
Saya glanced at Yukiji, who was slightly flushed, but had already nodded with a demure, "Yes, ma'am." Envy twinged in her stomach; what she wouldn't give to be tall and willowy! With that hair, no less!  
  
"You'll be provided with everything you need," Neptune said. "This includes workout clothing. You'll also be required to -wear- it; your own stuff is nice if you're on your own, but in class you will wear your uniform at all times or we'll know why." The way she said it made it very clear that -she-, personally, would know why. "For the remainder of the next five days," she announced, "you'll all be reporting here directly at ten o'clock. From there, we'll begin to assess your abilities and weaknesses, and by Wednesday, when your classes begin, we'll have a schedule posted. You'll be grouped by ability, but it's not all athletic, so don't worry."  
  
And once again Saya worried.  
  
*  
  
And when the first day of classes arrived, she went from "worry" to "full-blown panic". Soccer tryouts began the next morning, according to the announcements during homeroom -- that, at least, was something to look forward to.  
  
"I'll be expecting monthly written research assignments from all of you," said Ms Mizuno in first-period math, drawing groans from the older students and astonished gazes from the new ones. "Your mathematical journeys are not all about doing homework questions for completion. To truly understand and take joy in your work, you must understand what it stems from and why that's important." She paused. "These reports will comprise about fifteen percent of your grade, so do them well."  
  
Homeroom was all right until her homeroom teacher declared that every day they would read an inspirational passage from the most boring book of the century -- the old classic My Sister Is the Queen, by none other than Tsukino Shingo. It contained such gems as, "Even if you suck at something, still do it! There's nothing to be lost by trying! Why, when my sister became queen, I still played Sailor V, even though NOBODY can beat her at Sailor V!" It had been published simply because it was a look 'into the royal psyche', and everyone in Crystal Tokyo loathed it -- except for Mrs Yuuki, who was starry-eyed in adoration of the damn thing. It was a bit, thought Saya, like being in love with William Shatner (who had survived the Stasis in 2016 and had continued to make movies until his unfortunate encounter with a Black Moon Family droid which looked curiously like a Grue).  
  
Or, from Mr Gelbert in History, second period: "-History- is not just about -dates-. It is an -expression- of our -culture- and our global -traditions-. Each of you will be tested on your -synthesis- of the material, not just your -knowledge- of it."  
  
Chemistry in third period was just as bad. "How many of you have covered your redox reactions in school already?" (She just groaned as the entire class, minus the dumb kid after Makiya and before Mahandri, put up their hands.)  
  
She couldn't even understand the teacher in her English class, which she assumed was a Very Bad Thing indeed. Certainly, her teacher -- a short, weedy woman who spoke with such a strong Welsh lilt that even Nartan, who had grown up learning English from his tutors, could not understand her -- didn't think she was worthy of much notice.  
  
She was just glad that the schedule rotated every other day, so that she'd have Phys. Ed., Japanese Language Arts, Music, and Biology -- all subjects that she was at least proficient in. Saya did not even meet her roommate properly until Thursday morning, and then it was a brief ten-minute interlude during which they were both brushing their teeth -- Saya because she had soccer practise and Eva (surname Kerr, from Munich, Germany) because she had missed a week's worth of athletic evaluation and couldn't start her proper training until she'd caught up -- or pulling on their clothing. She barely even had time to worry about the way her hips looked as she ran about in her underwear, desperately searching for her old lucky soccer jersey.  
  
*  
  
To: smorisato@cute.co.jp  
From: sysadmin@ctma.edu  
Subject: New Student Accounts  
  
Dear Ms Morisato,  
  
The Crystal Tokyo Memorial Academy requires that all students use their internet services as well as their computer equipment (the laptop you have been assigned for the duration of your education at the institute). Accordingly, the CTMA requests that you discontinue use of your current e-mail account ( smorisato@cute.co.jp ) in favour of sayako_morisato@ctma.edu. The terms of use of school e-mail accounts are attached.  
  
Thank you for your co-operation,  
  
Arwa Ahmad  
System Administrator  
sysadmin@ctma.edu  
  
-  
  
To: sayako_morisato@ctma.edu  
From: fridayflowrs@biz.co.jp  
Subject: hours for the next week  
  
Hi Saya. Sorry to send this so late, the day before you start them. Hope it's not a problem. Hope your new school is going well for you. Your hours are as follows.  
  
Thurs 5pm - close  
Fri 5pm - close  
Sat 10am - 4pm  
  
I am sorry we couldn't cut them down for you this week but I am looking into hiring another girl so that you will only have to work week-ends as requested.  
  
Yours truely  
  
Mika  
  
-  
  
To: sayako_morisato@ctma.edu  
From: sparkleshine@cute.co.jp  
Subject: Work!!!  
  
Do you have your new schedule yet??? I think we have the same hours this week!!  
  
I miss you already. This place sucks as usual but it sucks more when nobody will tell the principal anything because you know how Anorudo is and that man scares me. Do you think he'd molest me if I went in and asked him for money for the extra history textbooks we need this year?? He seems kinda like the type!! lol but hes pretty old so maybe not.  
  
Hows the preppy senshi school?? Are the uniforms sucky?? Oh, oh, better yet -- are the boys hott?!! Set me up with a rich boy, Saya, you know you want to. Hows your math class? Does it suck? Does everything suck like I told you it would because we live in a wealthy bourgeousie dictatorship??? Like the Communists but kinda not??  
  
Youre new email is boring. Your old one was too though. They probably want to spy on you and download all your email and then laugh at it and print it out and sell copies of it on the black market. (Are you reading this???? I'M ONTO YOU!!!)  
  
Anyway, I stole the secretary's computer to write this and now shes coming back. I 3 3 3 you!! WBASAP!!!!  
  
*~Ami~*  
  
-  
  
To: secondyearmath@ctma.edu  
From: mercury@msd.gov.jp  
Subject: Reminder  
  
Please remember that you have an assignment due on the fifteenth. The subject is your choice out of these:  
  
-exponential growth  
-sinusoidal curves  
-imaginary numbers  
-applications of logarithmic functions  
-Bayes' Law and conditional probability  
  
This project will be counted as 5% of your overall grade (as shown on your course outline, available on the information sheet handed out on the first day of classes), so please hand it in on time. Late papers will result in a deduction of ten percent for each day late. These papers will be marked out of 50, so please go into appropriate detail. If you need help, I will be available during the hour before classes begin, the lunch hour, and one hour after classes end.  
  
Thank you,  
  
Ami Mizuno  
Head of Mathematical Studies  
Crystal Tokto Memorial Academy  
mercury@msd.gov.jp  
  
-  
  
To: sayako_morisato@ctma.edu  
From: newsflash@gamers.co.jp  
Subject: Final Fantasy XXV finally in development!!  
  
Straight from the geniuses at SquareEnixAtlas Japan comes...  
  
FINAL FANTASY XXV for the PlayStation XTreme!  
  
Become the hero Cordus as he travels across the land of Kuristau in search of his true identity... and the woman who took it from him.  
  
MORE BATTLES! MORE ACTION! MORE STORY! MORE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS! 80+ hours of INTENSE FF GAMING!  
  
Click here to pre-order this fantastic game for only 7700 yen!  
  
(to unsubscribe from this mailing list, please click here)  
  
-  
  
To: serenityhouse@ctma.edu  
From: capella@msd.gov.jp  
Subject: Curfews  
  
Hi, guys, just dropping a line to all you wonderful second-years to remind you that curfew is at -ten o'clock-, and if you're not back by then, I'm going to have to take action. :) Your sleep is important! You can't be good students without the proper amount! Take care of yourselves.  
  
A house meeting is scheduled for April 1st, after school. Please be there!  
  
Your loving house mother,  
  
Allison  
  
-  
  
To: secondyear@ctma.edu  
From: venus@msd.gov.jp  
Subject: Soccer Tryouts  
  
Girls' soccer tryouts will be held Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings in the field next to the training centre. The boys have after school field time.  
  
Congratulations to Hanazawa Ashiko for being chosen this summer as the Japan Girls' League's most valuable player. Good work, Hanazawa!  
  
Aino Minako  
(Soccer Coach)  
venus@msd.gov.jp  
  
-  
  
From: anorudo_hayasaki@vstationlink.co.jp  
To: sayako_morisato@ctma.edu  
Subject: (no subject)  
  
Hey. How's it going? Have you had soccer tryouts yet? Let's have coffee sometime.  
  
-Hayasaki  
  
*  
  
Her pen skidded across the page; fascinated, she watched it, until she realised that she was ruining a perfectly good sheet of looseleaf and that God was going to strike her down for it.  
  
If she was lucky.  
  
Work had been hell; when she'd got back to the dorms -- finally, -finally- back to the dorms at eleven-thirty -- she'd been muddy all over, and had only just avoided being caught for breaking curfew. What had followed had been a quick, furtive shower (she still wasn't sure if she'd got all the mud out of her hair -- served her right for throwing some at Ami in the first place, she guessed) and then tiptoeing into her room to grab her homework without waking her roommate.  
  
It was one in the morning. She had another math question to do, a xeroxed worksheet to fill in for English class, and then she could go to bed. Six AM was going to feel like hell. Bad hell, with burning and pitchforks and such.  
  
And Venus shouting at her to lift her knees . . .   
  
She pulled a fresh sheet of paper from her folder and wrote the problem carefully at the top. The handwriting she'd once thought neat was now simply utilitarian, and she hated every penstroke. It wasn't worth the zero she'd get if she didn't finish though -- not ever! She wouldn't let them be right about her.  
  
Even if they were.  
  
With a low sigh -- even cloistered in one of the the common room's study carrels, there was still a chance somebody would hear her and report her to Curfew Dictator Capella -- she finished the last transformation, neglecting to check her answer. Who cared? Nobody checked to see if it was right, just that it was done. And if ten percent of her grade was on completion, that was ten percent she only had to do halfheartedly.  
  
She carefully put the completed homework back into her folder and pulled out the English worksheet. Her eyes stung with exhaustion and her fingers were clumsy and --  
  
And if she didn't start working she'd be up even later. With a sign, she touched her pen to the paper and started to conjugate.  
  
*  
  
It was hard to get up the next morning.  
  
It was harder to run the ten laps at the beginning of the second-last soccer tryout. Her eyes were red and her skin was pale with sleep-deprivation; the worst thing, though, was the way Mars just looked at her, probably wondering where this talentless hack got off soiling her precious soccer practises with inattentiveness.  
  
Her shabby shorts and socks didn't help much: she'd had them for two or three years now, and they'd been mended so many times now that they were practically more scrap than original fabric. The socks were another problem -- they were too old to be mended, and until she got paid she couldn't afford another pair, which meant that her shin guards showed through the fabric embarrassingly. Her sneakers were dirty and that shade of gray which meant they'd been white a long time ago.  
  
Her hair was pulled back with an elastic band and when she moved her head too much it pulled and hurt and made her want to scream with frustration. The only consolation she had was that despite her fatigue, she seemed to be keeping up with everyone else -- due possibly to the four cups of strong black coffee she'd choked down that morning.  
  
The early morning sun shone down on them as they stretched, watching Venus carefully -- and, for some, suspicion. As Saya took a knee -- wincing at the way her quads were reacting to unexpected exercise -- she frowned. Across the semi circle from her, balancing perfectly on one leg (to stretch, of course) was Hanazawa Ashiko, looking, as usual, perfectly tranquil. Even her makeup was on perfectly.  
  
It didn't even look like she was -sweating-. The March air was unusually warm and humid, and the sun was brightly making Saya's eyes ache. The scent of breakfast -- a fantasy like dinner -- hung in the air almost palpitably. She'd have to pick up some food with her next paycheque, too. Maybe Dad would give her a discount or something.  
  
"Okay, girls," said Venus, her voice cutting through Saya's thoughts quite rudely. "We're going to do some formation drills. Everyone in their own positions, okay?" She sounded very much as though she, too, hated the morning practises but was too cheerful to do anything but take them in stride -- an attitude Saya both appreciated and envied.  
  
It happened so quickly that afterward she wondered if it had really happened at all. One moment she was running -- and then, as though the sun had suddenly spilt into her eyes by accident, she was falling -- and a moment after that, she'd run right into somebody and was on her arse. "Watch where you're going!" snapped an indignant voice.  
  
Saya looked up to see Hanazawa Ashiko on the ground across from her, and groaned. "Watch where you're going, Morisato!" shouted Venus from the sidelines, and, as Sayako picked herself up, she wondered how much worse today was going to get.  
  
*  
  
The morning did not progress with much more success, and by second period, Saya found herself both exhausted and bored with her classes. "So, as you can see, the Stasis resulted in -casualties- numbering in the -billions-," Mr Gelbert was saying, tapping his pointer on the board for emphasis. "The -role- of the Sailor Senshi -- notably Sailor Pluto, Neo-Queen Serenity, and Sailor Mars -- was -essential- to the salvation of the earth, and has earned the Queen the -rightful- title of saviour and sovereign. That doesn't mean that problems didn't arise at the dawn of the thirtieth century . . . "  
  
Saya stared at the board intently, and although her brain was saying, "Oh, yes, that does make sense -- how silly I am to have not known that," the rest of her body was dismissively telling her brain to sod off so it could sleep.  
  
She shifted uncomfortably. Hanazawa kept giving her these irritated looks, as though it was her fault alone that they'd collided, and she was sore everywhere -- not just from falling, but from running and pulling muscles she hadn't pulled since December. Her mind kept wandering -- saying things like, surely old Mr Gelbert couldn't be part of the King's Guard, since he was old and fat and perhaps this was all a hoax and she'd one day wake up to see 'Surprise Camera' hosts beaming down at her and -history-, Saya, not crazy paranoid fantasies -- and she found her notes were getting messier than usual.  
  
"Tired, Sayako?" whispered a voice next to her -- heavily accented -- and she jumped to see her roommate Eva leaning over with a grin. Glancing up at the front of the room, she saw that Mr Gelbert had written the assignment on the board (something she could do at lunch, thank God! At least it was Friday) and a low mumble had rippled across the room.  
  
"A little bit," she admitted belatedly, an embarrassed smile touching her lips. "I was up kind of -- "  
  
"Late," Eva finished, raising a perfect blonde eyebrow at her. "I noticed." The school uniform, which looked merely frumpy on Saya (who'd had the bright idea to stick her in a blazer?) looked fashionable and sleek on Eva, and, not for the first time, she felt a twinge of jealousy over her roommate's long, thin body. Even under the buzzing fluorescent lights, Eva's makeup looked flawless.  
  
Never mind her roommate's smart brain, and ability to sleep for more than five hours at a go. And --   
  
"I told Allison you'd gone to work," Eva said, when Saya didn't reply. Saya blushed belatedly.  
  
"I'm sorry if I woke you up," she apologised, face burning. That was all she needed, a roommate who hated her. Now her life was complete.  
  
Complete -what-, she had yet to decide.  
  
Eva laughed, showing off straight white teeth. "I sleep like a rock. I told her before you went. You'd better clear it with her next time, though, she looked pretty upset that you'd just left." The hazel eyes were bright with amusement.  
  
"Thank you very much!" Saya said, on the verge of both bowing and babbling. "I'll tell her next time." She grimaced. The thought of having to defend her need to work -- and she did, where else was she going to get money or see her friends? -- to the bright, cheery, ever-smiling Sailor Capella, human-form or not, made her cringe inwardly. "So -- how do you like this stuff?" she asked, motioning at the whiteboard noncommitally.  
  
"It's so -boring-," Eva replied, rolling her eyes. "I mean, I did this when I was thirteen, and it was boring then. My ancient history class was much better. I mean, until you understand the dynamics between the Chinese and the Japanese in the early twentieth century, you have no way of understanding the Great Wars in the twenty-first century, or what led up to the Stasis, you know?" She was earnest and, for the first time in days, Saya felt like she had somebody who she could talk to without being tongue-tied. Or at least to listen to. -Somebody- she saw more than three times a week at work.  
  
"I don't think we've ever covered that," Saya said, embarrassed again. "We mostly cover Japan in the hundred years before the Stasis, actually. And then the Stasis and recent history."  
  
Eva went on to enthusiastically describe Germany's history curriculum, and Saya listened, trying to pick something up from the steady stream of information.  
  
Lunch was soon. Lunch, when she could find a table and do her homework, because it was Friday and she was working.  
  
She thanked all little gods and deities that it was Friday.  
  
*  
  
"Hey, can I sit here?"  
  
"Well, if you want to."  
  
"Thanks. So you're the new girl, huh? From the south ports?"  
  
"One of them, but the only one from the south."  
  
"The most interesting one, then."  
  
"What do you mean by that?"  
  
"Oh, we were just watching you out on the field this morning. Good stuff, Morisato."  
  
"You were watching me, right? I'm not that good."  
  
"You're pretty good."  
  
"Did you -see- some of the girls out there? Anyway, it's just soccer."  
  
"We were too busy placing bets on who Hanazawa was going to smack into first. She's done it at every tryout since the first grade. I'm Hiroshi Mendou, by the way. King's Guard."  
  
"I'd introduce myself, but you seem to already know."  
  
"Sayako Morisato, age sixteen. First year trainee for examination in the Ministry of Special Defense. Your exam's in two years, and your roommate is Eva Kerr, from Berlin. Your father runs a grocery, and your mother is a seamstress, so you know how to balance accounts and sew, but you're a little bit rusty with the redox reactions. You have two twin sisters, both younger. You like chocolate, pink, sports, and you hate math. How's that?"  
  
"What did you do, memorise my -- um, my portfolio thing?"  
  
"Your profile? Maybe."  
  
"Are you -allowed- to do that?"  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"You're teasing me!"  
  
"You're right, I am, Morisato. I'll see you around."  
  
Stunned silence.  
  
(to be continued) 


End file.
